I was thinking exactly the same thing you just mentioned. It may be time to take a “Shelby Miller” break. Shut him down and work on secondary stuff….have some fun… and not focus on game situations. It sure seemed to help Shelby.

So he’s hitting somewhere between 90-100 innings for the first time in his life, and probably hitting the wall a little bit. His last few outings we’ve seen he starts strong, then seems to tire as he approaches the middle innings, whereas he had no similar issues early in the season. All that says to me this is a player exceeding his previous workload and feeling the effects. I wouldn’t be at all surprised to him struggle for awhile until he can work through it.

One final note: I can’t help but notice that Shelby Miller last year, in his first full professional season, threw 104 innings. I’m sure we all recall the Cardinals shutting him down for a period of time in the middle of the season, ostensibly to work on his secondary pitches, but also for the somewhat unspoken reason of limiting his innings total. It may be coincidence, but the fact Miller was managed to throw just over 100 innings and Martinez seems to be hitting the wall as he nears a similar total seems to me to be a bit more than coincidental. Personally, I wonder if the organisation considered putting Carlos on the shelf for a period of time the way they did with Shelby.

At any rate, I don’t think this speaks to much of anything wrong with Martinez, other than the fact he’s going through what countless other minor league pitchers have over the years as they learn to adjust to throwing a full season’s workload as they move up the ladder.